Former Bell City Councilman George Cole sentenced for bilking public funds

LOS ANGELES - Former Bell City Councilman George Cole was sentenced today to five years probation, 180 days of home confinement and 1,000 hours of community service for bilking public funds by receiving inflated salaries for sitting on city boards that rarely met.

Cole, the second of five former council members to be sentenced for misappropriating public funds, also must pay more than $77,000 in restitution to the city of Bell. While on home confinement, he will be subject to electronic monitoring.

Cole, 64, was convicted in March 2013 of two counts and acquitted of two others, while former council members George Mirabal and Teresa Jacobo and former Mayor Oscar Hernandez were convicted of five counts and acquitted of five others. Former Councilman Victor Bello was convicted of four counts and acquitted of four others.

The five pleaded no contest April 9 to two felony counts each of misappropriation of public funds in a plea deal -- charges on which jurors had deadlocked -- to resolve the case against them.

Jurors exonerated former Councilman Luis Artiga of all 12 charges against him.

Mirabal, 64, was the first of the five to be sentenced July 11. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy, who will also sentence Cole, ordered Mirabal to serve a year in county jail, five years probation and 1,000 hours of community service, rejecting the prosecution’s request of a four-year state prison term.

The prosecution also urged a four-year state prison sentence for Cole, along with seeking the more than $77,000 in restitution for the city of Bell.

In a sentencing memorandum, Deputy District Attorney Sean Hassett noted that Cole “continued to play an active part, voting for additional unearned and illegal raises for his co-defendants, although he did not personally benefit from them” when he was not accepting a city salary from November 2007 to October 2008.

The prosecutor also noted that Cole has been “working with the city of Bell for months in order to pay full restitution.”

Cole’s attorney, Ronald Kaye, in asking for a probationary sentence without any jail time, cited his client’s health.

Advertisement

During the trial, Kaye told jurors that the veteran city councilman decided to work without pay after realizing in November 2007 that people in the city of Bell had been laid off, and that a “huge rift” developed with then- Bell City Administrator Robert Rizzo after Cole said he did not want to be paid.

During the trial, prosecutors contended that the council members were paid illegal salaries for sitting on four city boards that rarely met, with their salaries reaching $100,000 in a city that was 2 1/2 square miles and where the median household income was $35,000.

Defense attorneys countered during the trial that their clients were wrongly accused, arguing that they worked diligently for the city and earned their salaries.

Jacobo, 56, is set to be sentenced Friday, with Hernandez, 66, and Bello, 55, expected to be sentenced next week.

The five were charged in September 2010 along with Rizzo and former Assistant City Administrator Angela Spaccia in what then-District Attorney Steve Cooley said was “corruption on steroids.”

Rizzo pleaded no contest last October to all 69 charges against him and was sentenced April 17 to 12 years in prison and ordered to pay $8.8 million in restitution.

Spaccia was convicted last December of 11 felony counts, including misappropriation of public funds and conflict of interest. Jurors acquitted her of one count of secretion of a public record involving former Bell Police Chief Randy Adams’ employment contract, and deadlocked on another count -- misappropriation of public funds involving an alleged $75,500 loan of taxpayer money in 2003 -- that was eventually dismissed.

Spaccia was sentenced in April to 11 years and eight months in state prison and was ordered to pay more than $8 million in restitution. She is appealing her conviction.